COVID-19

[tenchboy]

And when the postman calls with a signed for delivery...
with that little hand held device...
and says just wipe your finger through this screenful of germs that all the rest of the neighbourhood have contributed to.

I have trouble with that at normal times! I asked the postie once if they were disinfected - I know between signings is impractical but I was hoping maybe daily - he said nah! we just take the next one of the shelf.

Fortunately I have the wrong fingers for supermarket touch screens: I can jab poke and stab at it all night but nothing happens. The last time I tried, I gave up and asked for help, the lady came over touched it once, it worked fine and off I went.

[dyqik]

It's completely practical to "disinfect" them between signatures. It just needs an alcohol based sanitizing wipe.

[Woodchopper]

Denmark's first case has just been confirmed, which is a man who was on a skiing holiday in Italy.

Presumably not in Rome...

Not in Codogno either.

The domestic infection rate must be wildly underestimated here because otherwise it's weird how tourists catch it if the locals don't have it.

The new Dutch and Northern Ireland cases had both just come home from Northern Italy.

[Brightonian]

Dow Jones now 11% down since last weekend.

With the case in Northern Ireland (they'd travelled up from Dublin Airport), I'm wondering whether I should go and join my father in Ireland (he's in his 80s), but we reckon we should just keep an eye on the news for the moment.

A housemate reckons I'm being paranoid, she's been to Wuhan you see and they "barely have electricity" so their healthcare can't be up to much.

[sTeamTraen]

With the case in Northern Ireland (they'd travelled up from Dublin Airport), I'm wondering whether I should go and join my father in Ireland (he's in his 80s), but we reckon we should just keep an eye on the news for the moment.

A housemate reckons I'm being paranoid, she's been to Wuhan you see and they "barely have electricity" so their healthcare can't be up to much.

I suspect that if your Dad got it he might be at quite some risk, but for the moment I would think that his chances of getting it at all are pretty low. In fact if you are living in Brighton, which had several cases, and the incubation period is as long as I've seen reported (up to 27 days), you might not be doing him any favours, statistically, by going over. But we're still comparing two numbers with a lot of zeroes after the decimal point.

[raven]

Using touchscreen self checkouts at the supermarket doesn't sound great. Like those touchscreen order points at fast food places - even under normal circumstances, do you really want to use one of them before you sit down to eat with your hands?

I was at the GPs for a blood test yesterday. They have a check-in screen. Sure, there's a santiser despenser right next to it, but in the 10 minutes I sat in the waiting room I watched 4 patients use it who all touched their faces (in one case actually sticking a finger up their nose too) in between touches on the screen. One person used the sanitiser, but only before they used the screen so that wouldn't stop them picking up something from it.

I felt like telling the receptionist it was contagion waiting to happen.

They did have lots of signs up telling patients with suspected coronavirus should not go into the practise, just go home and call. But this Guardian article suggests some people are ignoring the advice and just waltzing in to their GPs. And 111 is apparently a hit-and-miss for advice, which is not a surprise.

[jimbob]

Using touchscreen self checkouts at the supermarket doesn't sound great. Like those touchscreen order points at fast food places - even under normal circumstances, do you really want to use one of them before you sit down to eat with your hands?

I was at the GPs for a blood test yesterday. They have a check-in screen. Sure, there's a santiser despenser right next to it, but in the 10 minutes I sat in the waiting room I watched 4 patients use it who all touched their faces (in one case actually sticking a finger up their nose too) in between touches on the screen. One person used the sanitiser, but only before they used the screen so that wouldn't stop them picking up something from it.

I felt like telling the receptionist it was contagion waiting to happen.

They did have lots of signs up telling patients with suspected coronavirus should not go into the practise, just go home and call. But this Guardian article suggests some people are ignoring the advice and just waltzing in to their GPs. And 111 is apparently a hit-and-miss for advice, which is not a surprise.

I have always thought those touchscreens are even more stupid in GPs than elsewhere

[Brightonian]

What about those styli that are meant to work with touchscreens? I got one of those some years ago for my iPad 2 but it didn't work well and I found it easier to use my finger. Maybe they're better now, so would carrying one of those around solve the problem when confronted with a touchscreen at a self checkout/McDonald's/ticket machine?

[Herainestold]

Video interview with a doctor in Wuhan. He says the situation is under control but it is not over yet. He does not seem to be over stressed.
I don't think our government is capable of acting like the Chinese and bringing in all these resources to bear on the problem, so it may be much worse here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i_Sv28bFSA

[AMS]

I guess one difference is that Wuhan is a city of (?) 8m in a country of 1bn-plus. So vastly more support can be drafted in from other provinces to prop up the local healthcare system. Whereas a similar scale of outbreak in London would leave us far more stretched, even if the absolute numbers were similar.

[Herainestold]

I guess one difference is that Wuhan is a city of (?) 8m in a country of 1bn-plus. So vastly more support can be drafted in from other provinces to prop up the local healthcare system. Whereas a similar scale of outbreak in London would leave us far more stretched, even if the absolute numbers were similar.

Yes, a good point. Another difference being that the government in China actually cares about the people.

[jimbob]

I guess one difference is that Wuhan is a city of (?) 8m in a country of 1bn-plus. So vastly more support can be drafted in from other provinces to prop up the local healthcare system. Whereas a similar scale of outbreak in London would leave us far more stretched, even if the absolute numbers were similar.

Yes, a good point. Another difference being that the government in China actually cares about the people.

Because imprisoning the ophthalmist who raised the alarm says that so well.

[plodder]

I'm not convinced this mask gives the wearer sufficient protection. But better than nothing. And certainly better than the first eight prototypes I've tried on my pet goldfish.

I think this is fine because dogs sneeze in

https://www.petmd.com/dog/general-healt ... -it-normal

[Woodchopper]

First case reported in sub-Saharan Africa is an Italian who had flown from Milan to Nigeria. Hopefully they haven't infected anyone else.

The first Lithuanian case was also someone who had been to Italy.

See here.

This really does look like there are a lot more cases in Italy than are reflected in the official numbers.

[Seagull]

Can anyone here explain why China are so convinced that they have this under control? I appreciate the depth of their control measures, and I could believe that the situation in Hubei could resolve (at least temporarily), but why couldn't a similar outbreak occur in other provinces, as indeed we are anticipating in the rest of the world? Does anyone believe that won't happen (are their control measures sufficient to prevent it?).

[shpalman]

First case reported in sub-Saharan Africa is an Italian who had flown from Milan to Nigeria. Hopefully they haven't infected anyone else.

This is causing terrible cognitive dissonance amongst all the racist Leghistas who've been wanting to stop Africans arriving in Italy.

The first Lithuanian case was also someone who had been to Italy.

See here.

This really does look like there are a lot more cases in Italy than are reflected in the official numbers.

bUt wE hAvE mOrE cOnFiRmEd cAsEs bEcAuSe wE'vE dOnE mOrE tEsTs the UK has done 7,690 tests and found 15 positives, Italy had done about 9400 tests by the time 400 positives had been found.

I still can't get over how ``patient 1'' was able to infect 8 staff and patients at the hospital as if they weren't prepared for the eventuality that someone might show up at a hospital with a disease.

[tenchboy]

I have always thought those touchscreens are even more stupid in GPs than elsewhere

It's the whole communal waiting room thing that gets me: "come and sit in this room full of what everyone else in the neighbourhood has got and I'll be right with you"; you walk in and every wall, chair, surface and thing is crawling and slithering - pulsating even - with an unholy conglomeration of viri, bacterii and god knows what else just waiting for you to come in and give them house room.

[Woodchopper]

bUt wE hAvE mOrE cOnFiRmEd cAsEs bEcAuSe wE'vE dOnE mOrE tEsTs the UK has done 7,690 tests and found 15 positives, Italy had done about 9400 tests by the time 400 positives had been found.

Is it possible that there are demographic groups in Italy who may be infected but avoid being tested - eg someone living in poverty who couldn't afford to be off work for a few weeks?

[shpalman]

bUt wE hAvE mOrE cOnFiRmEd cAsEs bEcAuSe wE'vE dOnE mOrE tEsTs the UK has done 7,690 tests and found 15 positives, Italy had done about 9400 tests by the time 400 positives had been found.

Is it possible that there are demographic groups in Italy who may be infected but avoid being tested - eg someone living in poverty who couldn't afford to be off work for a few weeks?

Well in the north I wouldn't say poverty as such, but someone living "precariously", sure. But I don't think they'd even bother testing you unless you had symptoms and you had a link to a proven case. Italy is trying to justify this by saying that asymptomatic carriers don't spread the disease much, so I expect what's happening is that lots of people have mild symptoms and are just getting on with their lives (which is how people would be dealing with this anyway if there hadn't been a whole load of deaths in China at the beginning of this) while the rest of the world assumes that anyone coming back from Northern Italy is worth testing.

Of course it's much more feasible for each country to test anyone who arrives from Northern Italy, than it is for Italy to test literally everyone in Northern Italy. But without doing the latter we have no real idea of the number of mild/asymptomatic cases.

[shpalman]

I'm surprised that Italians aren't going on about how actually the virus was invented in Italy and you should make sure you catch that version and not the Chinese ripoff copy since that's their attitude to most other things.

[mikeh]

Couple more UK cases, picked up in Iran, both packaged off to the Royal Free in London.
Importation of cases into UK slowly increasing (up to 19 now), but I don't think we've seen a person to person transmission here yet.

Nigeria has also reported a confirmed case.

(Edited above numbers, 17 is the England cases, plus one each in Wales and N.Ireland)

[shpalman]

It only looks like all the infections are coming from Italy because ``foreign countries are focusing their checks on Italians and therefore it is clear that only Italians are accounted for.''!

(650 cases in Italy from 12104 swabs, by the way.)

[shpalman]

I'm surprised that Italians aren't going on about how actually the virus was invented in Italy and you should make sure you catch that version and not the Chinese ripoff copy since that's their attitude to most other things.

``Let’s not forget that we were the first country in Europe to isolate the virus''

[Trinucleus]

Using touchscreen self checkouts at the supermarket doesn't sound great. Like those touchscreen order points at fast food places - even under normal circumstances, do you really want to use one of them before you sit down to eat with your hands?

I was at the GPs for a blood test yesterday. They have a check-in screen. Sure, there's a santiser despenser right next to it, but in the 10 minutes I sat in the waiting room I watched 4 patients use it who all touched their faces (in one case actually sticking a finger up their nose too) in between touches on the screen. One person used the sanitiser, but only before they used the screen so that wouldn't stop them picking up something from it.

I felt like telling the receptionist it was contagion waiting to happen.

They did have lots of signs up telling patients with suspected coronavirus should not go into the practise, just go home and call. But this Guardian article suggests some people are ignoring the advice and just waltzing in to their GPs. And 111 is apparently a hit-and-miss for advice, which is not a surprise.

But if the alternative at busy times is a queue of people at reception booking in, will that be any safer?

[sTeamTraen]

It only looks like all the infections are coming from Italy because ``foreign countries are focusing their checks on Italians and therefore it is clear that only Italians are accounted for.''!

Just one of many lessons in sampling bias that can be drawn from the media coverage of this outbreak. Or any outbreak. Or any natural phenomenon at all really.